


This Home

by Artistic_Fuss



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other, after/during DOTO, gods older than the outsider, new void god, so spoilers, spoilers for doto, void god daud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artistic_Fuss/pseuds/Artistic_Fuss
Summary: There has always been something about Daud. Something too old for his body. Something Otherly.





	This Home

He has been something of the sea long before he gasped his first breath of salted sea air. There is something deep in him, unaging, inhuman, that connects him to the rolling waves of the ocean. His eyes show it. When he stands near water it reflects in the steel grey and shows timeless storms. The people of Dunwall call him a wolf. The wolf of man. His closest whalers know he is more than that. A shark he is not, a wolf he is not. A sea monster is more likely. Or even some form of a forgotten god. His motions flow and turn with tides and his voice holds the force of tidal waves. And yet, he can be as calm as the sea bed. Undisturbed sand, shells, shipwrecks. And as intimidating as the great whales that swim in those same waters. A man that looks as if he could swallow you whole on accident. Or on purpose. As he has with many before. The whalers are bound to be lost in his sea but can harness the winds better than any sailor. Many can and do look that old sea god in the eye and snark at him, only to hear a laugh like those of wives tales. Of the mermaids and sea witches cackling about the lost sailors. 

Daud is an ocean and the Whalers are the sailors. Sailors that, many believe to be lost in a vast ocean on sinking ships. When really. They are navigating and surviving better than those on the shore. 

There are lighthouses to his ocean. Steadfast Whalers with sharp eyes and tongues, cautioning the sailors of the jagged edges of Daud’s personality. Steering them away from hidden reefs. Many have sailed him for so long they no longer need the warnings. The ocean is better known to them than the land they dock at. 

Daud is a timeless god of the ocean. He is the face that is seen as a sailor takes their last gulp of air, as their lungs fill with water. He is the sharks that swim near whaling ships, attracted by the blood of the poor captured beasts. He is the death, the fear and the beauty of the ocean. And it all hides behind steel eyes and a stone face. 

Perhaps this feeling came from his parents. His father a deadly pirate known to drown rivals. Tie ill-tempered women to anchors and sink them like stones. His mother, who walked rocky shores of Pandysia in her youth and fed his father to the whales. A sea witch without a doubt, that carved whale charms and knew the ocean life and plants as if they were family. 

Or perhaps it came with his own interest of why the whales sang. Leading him out to sea and his own story of survival. Leaving more bodies in the water for the great beasts. 

Maybe it came to him at the University of Natural Philosophy. Where he first was touched by the very god he was once referred to as the son of. The Outsider. Frozen hands and a voice like that of a siren, working its way into his studies, into his work. Feeding him unimaginable realities and truths. The Outsider leaking into everything about him. Pitch like ink filling his arm with a story of a great sea, and beasts of the deep. 

Whenever the feeling came to be part of Daud, it was there before the Whalers. The oldest of them remember the old god-like feeling from when they first met him. 

Like coming across an Outsider’s shrine. Old, worn, and breathing, they say. Sat lazily above a door, a leg dangling off the frame like the cigar between his fingers. The smoke erupting from his lips like a prayer. They had seen nothing like him. And to the day, nothing compares to the feeling they got of meeting an ancient god in those moments.

The feeling sticks to him right till the end. Sitting in a chair on the deck of the Dreadful Whale, a cigar in his fingers, breathing out the last breath of smoke. Weakened with a mortal age. She has trouble leaving him alone there for his last breaths. But he looks at peace for the first time since she has met him. She leaves him there. 

Seeing him again is a shock. A shock of cold water to the lungs. She looks between him and the Outsider and knows. She knows that the feeling of an old god was meant for Daud. His hand touches the Outsider’s shoulder and he speaks the last words he will ever say with a mortal tongue. The Outsider’s stone exterior breaks away and he stumbles towards her, living hands and startled breath. 

And Daud. Daud sits. It’s his chair, torn and worn with age, a dusty red with dark carved wood. His hand reaches out to her in one last action as stone overtakes him, covering his fingertips just as she takes her hand away. 

So there before her sits a new god. Something of such ancient power that something deep in his chest knew that one day he would be here.


End file.
